An Overview of the VenusDB Active Multidatabase System

VenusDB is a C++ embedded, forward-chaining rule language and compiler that includes linguistic elements and runtime support for accessing multiple databases across multiple platforms. Multidatabase access was a natural evolutionary step for Venus. Evaluation of Venus using an expert-database application revealed the need for explicit syntax for the expression of event conditions. Thus, VenusDB provides for both eventcondition -action (ECA) rules typical of active-database systems and condition action rules typical of expert systems and expert-database systems. The Venus compiler is readily extended by virtue of an abstract interface, the AMI, that encapsulates the details of data access. Although middleware elements can be amorphous, the AMI forms a well defined interface for the encapsulation of databases and their integration with a forward-chaining inference engine